This day was the most full and active day as it had so much happen. With some very interesting talks and animations.
The short films were really interesting and used mostly 2d animation, if not stop motion, none were 3d. These animations worked with a much wider variety of themes and meanings and were much more enjoyable than the students grad films, this most likely came down to experience, however it did result in some very, artsy films which could be seen as either confusing or pretentious. there were two animations that i really liked. My favourite was called the orchestra, where people had a mini music band following them around playing a tune to there feelings, emotions, lifestyle or even heritage, (I'm talking about the bagpipe characters there!) it had such a satisfying and pleasing feeling to it the story focused on an old man and his out of tune brass band falling for an old lady and her string quintet and the humour and story fitted it so nicely. The other animation on the other hand turned out quite disturbing and was very thought provoking, The Master, where a dog and monkey were waiting for their master to return however the monkey got out of its cage starting to reek havoc around the house looking like it was assuming the role of the master, an abusive master. It ended with the deaths of both characters but not after they were represented in a way which i saw as an abusive couple as the dog was beaten then treated nicely then beaten and repeated until it died.
How to make Friends and animate people: The art of crowd funding, this was enjoyable purely because of the name. But honestly i found it the most interesting and the most frustrating part of the festival. There were three professionals at the talk, one of the members on the team for Simons Cat, Emma Burch, an animated series whose first video got leaked and went viral leading to public funding and fame to get the series off the ground. The series is on YouTube but it is not seen as a good platform for animations due to an issue over a new system which affects animations to be (i believe) a lower frame rate. The second was a man from Aardman, Merlin Crossingham, talking about how they advertised their kick-starter for the reboot of morph. This relied on an older fan base as well as knowledge of the original to get it up and running. The third professional was from an independent studio that relies upon their fan base and crowd funding, Jon Turner, the co founder of Kilogramme. His Tall Tales series covered various short stories and became its own advertisement through it gradually gaining fame and giving out rewards or merchandise for supporting their kick-starter campaign. He also talked about how you need to work with your budget as it could be very limited and to create the most suitable advertising to get your work out there.
The main feature i found from this talk was the use of kick-starter and indie gogo sites that get independent content off the ground as well as being a good way to advertise your content. A prominent part that often came up was the target Audience which gives direction to your content.
The Master class with Will Bescher, an animator from Aardman and gave us an insight into the development of the animations at Aardman, from the characters to the sets and the actual animating. I found it interesting but at the time i was unable to apply it to anything as i had yet to do stop motion work, features such as having multiple faces and expressions for each characters weren't needed in something like 2d animation where it gets drawn in. None the less to see armatures and models from a professional company was still incredible.
Because of the Will Bescher talk i ended up really wanting to see the shaun the sheep movie, which was fun and entertaining, but i also focused and looked at things that had been brought in the previous talk, looking at the little details that were brought up like thumb prints in the models or flat characters. I found it enjoyable as i felt it widened my view of animations to actually focus on the finite parts of the animation.
I found the day enjoyable but frustrating as i wanted to ask questions and talk to the professionals but failed to because i felt my questions were irrelevant or nonsensical, what further frustrated me was i didn't have any of my own work to show, feeling i needed a specific style to interest people. However this is not needed as it is only my first year and its better to have a wider range in drawing style to be able to adapt, while still developing my own work.
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